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% File Semdial2012.tex
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\title{Why do we overspecify in dialogue? \\ An experiment on L2 lexical acquisition}

\author{Author 1\\
	    XYZ Company\\
	    111 Anywhere Street\\
	    Mytown, NY 10000, USA\\
	    {\tt author1@xyz.org}
	  \And
	Author 2\\
  	ABC University\\
  	900 Main Street\\
  	Ourcity, PQ, Canada A1A 1T2\\
  {\tt author2@abc.ca}
	  \And
	Author 3\\
  	ABC University\\
  	900 Main Street\\
  	Ourcity, PQ, Canada A1A 1T2\\
  {\tt author2@abc.ca}}



\date{}

\begin{document}
\maketitle
\begin{abstract}

%Producing referring expressions plays a central role in human communication; people can only communicate if they can agree and establish joint attention regarding the object they are discussing. 

Various psycholinguistic studies have shown that, although it makes interpretation more costly, speakers include more information in their referring expressions than is strictly necessary to identify an object. In other words, speakers \emph{overspecify} their referring expressions.  
In the literature, there are two competing explanations for this phenomena: 1) Overspecification is a result of human's limited cognitive resources, 2) Overspecification is a useful tool for communication. Our hypothesis is that overspecification helps establish conceptual pacts which facilitate lexical acquisition. In this paper, we describe an experimental study designed to evaluate our hypothesis. Our results support our hypothesis and hence the claim that overspecification is a useful mechanism for communication.

\end{abstract}

\input{introduction}

\input{theoretical-background}

\input{experimental-setup}

\input{results}

\input{discussion} 

\input{conclusion}

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\end{document}
